My best friend’s fish is pregnant again,
and I think about my aunt in Hong Kong
who releases fish back into the ocean
once a year, buying them from restaurants
boasting their seafood in tanks—feng shui,
because if your restaurant’s got one arowana,
translated from Chinese as “the dragon fish
spits out the pearl,” it’ll do fine, but with two,
pearls and pearls will rain down your meals,
getting caught in oysters and abalone and lobster,
and isn’t seafood so beautiful in this greatest
music video of all time starring your arowana,
oh arowana, you dimepiece of a fish, let me
write odes for you, how you inspire
black market bad boys and girls, and calling
all supervillains, it’s time to unite, don
those eyepatches, because the arowana
can be trained like a cat or a dog
by your side, and though it’s caged
in a tank, it’s a dragon—a damn dragon
that’ll let you take over the world,
breathing fire, spitting out pearls,
and my aunt stares at tanks of seafood
in Kowloon, and of course, she can’t afford
an arowana, a six-digit-cost-display-
inside-like-a-Manet-painting-on-a-gilded-
gold-plane, so she buys regular fish citizens,
releasing them back into water,
giving new meaning to spa days of fish
eating away at your dead skin—the Buddhist
lifestyle of giving back, and oh, how I wish
my best friend’s gold fish was pregnant
with an arowana—maybe mommy goldfish
could first grow fifty times its size,
a superhero giving birth to a supervillain,
and yes, I know it’s impossible, but just
just imagine those pearls and pearls raining
on enough meals to feed everyone
in Hong Kong, and I think about all the little
boys and girls staring at tanks outside
of restaurants, trying to grab onto a lobster tail—
the adventure—give me some pearls—and fire.
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